A monster most every weekday. Three adventure seeds a post.
Because Pathfinder and 3.5 are more fun than work.
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Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Peluda

Why has it taken us this long to get the peluda in fantasy
gaming?Like the gorynych, this is a
wonderful one-off dragon species with a proud medieval pedigree, a throwback to
when dragons were terrible fire-breathing beasts and not
chatty sorcerers.Part dragon and part
porcupine, it’s a nasty customer (for all that it is only size Large).Best of all, it has built into its stats one
of the crucial elements of a mythological monster: a weakness.Now in a campaign where PCs are slinging
fireballs as if they were at pitching practice, maybe that’s not a big
deal.But to me, there’s something nice
about rewarding the scholarly/bardic PC who takes the time to actually listen
to the locals’ tales about the creature, plus the excitement of the cost/benefit
analysis that taking advantage of that weakness requires (i.e. is the lost
damage per round worth the sunder attempt?).

Peludas are no brain surgeons or mighty masterminds; even
the expanded ecology from Pathfinder Adventure Path #33: The Varnhold
Vanishing indicates that they are
brutes who at most might have a few humanoid tribes serving them.But that’s fine, because plotting is not what
they’re for.Peludas are for throwing at
PCs before they’re ready, for terrifying them with a quill barrage, and for
being as deadly in defense as they are on offense.Peludas is how you scare PCs into fighting
smart (or at least extra bloody and determined), making their eventual victory
all the more sweet.

Marsh giants have
been flattering a peluda, calling it the Great Master and the Lord of Narrow
Swamp.In truth, they are angling for
the peluda’s eggs, which they use to mutate their own kin and their skum
servants into spiny monstrosities.The
peluda has only surrendered one so far, but as the power goes to her head she
may offer more, not realizing to what ends her clutch is being put to.

A saint is famous
for having vanquished a local peluda.There’s only one problem: the tale isn’t true—the peluda lived.When it resurfaces, the church hires
adventurers to discreetly dispatch the beast. Then it sends bounty hunters after them,
determined that the saint’s famous first miracle remain so in the eyes of the
faithful.

Adventurers are sent
to save a prince’s life—or end it, depending on their employer.Either way, they are too late—they find the
prince’s headless body still in its armor, impaled by a barrage of terrible
quills.(His less-well-armored horse has
been devoured.)Just as they come across
the body, so too does another search party, who for their own reasons
immediately accuses the adventurers of being in league with the beast.Now it’s a race through the swamp to be the
first to tell their version of the tale, while dodging both the still-hungry
peluda and a black dragon keen on taking over the spiny dragon’s territory.

By the way, please forgive the occasional typos. I am aware of them, but disagreements between MS Word and the Blogger template make my entries nearly impossible to edit once posted. I blame gremlins. You can find a more polished version of this blog over on Tumblr.